How do I clear my bash screen while maintaining scrollback?

Question

The clear command can make the next command easier to read (if it outputs less than a page there's no scrolling hence no searching for the beginning). However it also clears the scrollback buffer which you may not always want.

See @Guillermo answer below: command > clear -x – MountainMan Feb 19 '20 at 21:14 — MountainMan, Feb 19 '20 at 21:14
@Capybara now, the name was changed – Capybara Feb 23 '24 at 11:00 — Capybara, Feb 23 '24 at 11:00

score 47 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '11 at 14:33

47

Just press Ctrl-L on the keyboard.

answered Jul 27 '11 at 14:33

Andy Lee Robinson

1,198

Current behavriou of ctrl-l in cygwin bash erase scrollback as well. – Trismegistos Oct 21 '20 at 08:18
It's not working in Windows – Lead Developer May 02 '22 at 14:26

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 12 '20 at 18:41

TL;DR

CtrlL to scroll the current line to the top. The scrollback is not erased.
clear -x to erase the all the lines that are not in the scrollback.
clear to erase all the lines, including the scrollback.

CtrlL is a binding of GNU readline library, which, as Bash manual page says, is what handles reading input when using an interactive shell.

clear-screen (C-L) Clear the screen leaving the current line at the top of the screen.

The CtrlL binding can be reassigned in .inputrc.

clear, on the other hand, is an external command.

$ type clear
clear is /usr/bin/clear

From its manual page,

clear clears your screen if this is possible, including its scrollback buffer (if the extended “E3” capability is defined).

OPTIONS
-x do not attempt to clear the terminal's scrollback buffer using the extended “E3” capability.

Unfortunatelly, current behaviour of a cygwin bash make ctrl-l to erase scrollback as well. — Trismegistos, Oct 21 '20 at 08:17

score 8 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

8

Use tput reset

Thanks to this answer: What commands can I use to reset and clear my terminal?

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Community

1

answered Jul 26 '11 at 17:36

mcqwerty

553

score 7 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 28 '11 at 23:12

7

the clear command does not clear scrollback for me. so clear or ^L works.

answered Jul 28 '11 at 23:12

Matt

767

Capybara · Answer 5 · 2022-09-16T09:37:11.470

5

In newer versions of clear, it seems that the default behaviour has been changed. To clear the screen and keep scrollback use the option -x. To have the previous behaviour create an alias such as:

alias clear='clear -x'

edited Sep 16 '22 at 09:37

answered Feb 12 '20 at 16:01

Capybara

151

clear -x also works great in non-interactive bash scripts. – Jesse Nickles Mar 29 '22 at 10:06

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 26 '11 at 17:41

3

If you pipe the output to less, then not only will it clear the screen and show your output at the top, but it will switch back to the previous screen contents when you exit.

answered Jul 26 '11 at 17:41

Darth Android

38,230

1

Good point, less is powerful. But it's not quite what I'm looking for. If it outputs "less" than a full screen it doesn't start at the top and, as you allude to, it doesn't get added to the scrollback. – mcqwerty Jul 26 '11 at 17:52

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 18 '23 at 18:31

On MacOs and using vi-mode I added this to my ~/.inputrc:

$if mode=vi
set keymap vi-insert
Control-w: "^[dBxi "
Control-l: 'clear\n'
$endif

Then in my bashrc I have this function:

# clear screen and save scrollback
clear() {
    printf "\\033[H\\033[22J"
}

How do I clear my bash screen while maintaining scrollback?

7 Answers7

TL;DR